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MONET The restless vision JACKIE WULLSCHLAGER 576pp. Allen Lane. 35 [pounds sterling]. 'I would have liked to write to each of you [separately] to thank you for your kind letters [...]

STILL PICTURES On photography and memory JANET MALCOLM 176pp, Granta. 14.99 [pounds sterling]. Janet Malcolm wrote for the New Yorker for almost sixty years on literature, photography and tine art, [...]

SOLDIER SAILOR CLAIRE KILROY 256pp. Faber. 16.99 [pounds sterling]. Claire Kilroy's fifth novel--her first in more than a decade--is a confessional love letter from a mother, Soldier, to her young [...]

NAPOLEON'S PLUNDER And the theft of Veronese's 'Feast' CYNTHIA SALTZMAN 320pp. Thames and Hudson. 25 [pounds sterling]. Cynthia Saltzman's Napoleon's Plunder skilfully interweaves three narratives: the story of the Louvre, [...]

SOJOURN Amit Chaudhuri 144pp. Faber. 14.99 [pounds sterling]. A MIT CHAUDHURI'S EIGHTH NOVEL, Sojourn, is a beautiful meditation on memory set during a temporary stay in Berlin. The unnamed narrator [...]

TRUE TO NATURE Open-air painting in Europe 1780-1870 Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, until August 29 TRUE TO NATURE is a perfectly timed exhibition. The European trend for landscape painting en plein [...]

GOYA A portrait of the artist JANIS A. TOMLINSON 448pp. Princeton University Press. 30 [pounds sterling] (US $35). 'IS BIOGRAPHY ESSENTIALLY the chronicle of an individual's life journey (and thus [...]

ABSENTEES On variously missing persons DANIEL HELLER-ROAZEN 320pp. Princeton University Press. 28 [pounds sterling] (US $33). The marking of absence is an early memory for all who went to school; [...]

THESE DAYS LUCY CALDWELL 288pp. Faber. 12.99 [pounds sterling]. Lucy Caldwell's fifth novel is haunted by Louis MacNeice's late poem, 'Selva Oscura' (1961). The line 'These days, though lost, will [...]

FOR THE RECORD DAVID CAMERON 752pp. William Collins. 25 [pounds sterling]. If Louis XVI had been sent to America instead of to the guillotine in 1793, and if he'd then [...]

THE WOMEN OF TROY PAT BARKER 320pp. Hamish Hamilton. 18.99 [pounds sterling]. The Women of Troy is Pat Barker's sequel to The Silence of the Girls (TLS, August 22, 2018), [...]

CHINA ROOM SUNJEEV SAHOTA 256pp. Harvill Seeker. 16.99 [pounds sterling]. The china room of Sunjeev Sahota's third novel is a narrow outbuilding with a small slatted window on a farm [...]

THE CRAFT How the Freemasons made the modern world JOHN DICKIE 496pp. Hodder and Stoughton. 25 [pounds sterling]. IN HIS ENTERTAINING HISTORY of Freemasonry, John Dickie, the author of an [...]

SYBILLE BEDFORD An appetite for life SELINA HASTINGS 432pp. Chatto and Windus. 25 [pounds sterling]. AGED SEVENTY-SEVEN, John Betjeman regretted that he had not had enough sex. Aged eighty-seven, Sybille [...]

Robert A. Caro WORKING Researching, interviewing, writing 240pp. Bodley Head. 20 [pounds sterling]. 978 1 84792 605 0 US: Knopf. $25. 978 0 525 65634 0 I never had the [...]

SNOW JOHN BANVILLE 352pp. Faber, 14.99 [pounds sterling]. Since 2006, John Banville has written crime fiction under the pen name Benjamin Black. In interviews he claims that Black writes faster [...]

VIRGINIA WOOLF Art, life and vision National Portrait Gallery, until October 26 ART & LIFE The paintings of Beryl Bainbridge King's College London, until October 19 'Painting and writing have [...]

MARY BEARD John Williams's novel Stoner became a must-read rediscovery of 2013. I'm afraid I resisted. But I am intending to sit down this summer with the last of his [...]

Jacqueline Rose MOTHERS An essay on love and cruelty 256pp. Faber. 12.99 [pounds sterling]. 978 0571 33143 7 US: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. $26. 978 0 374 21379 4 Dale [...]

Haruki Murakami KILLING COMMENDATORE Translated by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen 704pp. Harvill Seeker. 20 [pounds sterling]. 978 1 787 30019 4 Introducing his collection of short stories, Blind Willow, [...]

Adam Smyth, editor A HISTORY OF ENGLISH AUTOBIOGRAPHY 432pp. Cambridge University Press. 64.99 [pounds sterling] (US $99.99). 978 1 107 07841 3 Two francophone philosophers haunt A History of English [...]

Sam Miller FATHERS 256pp. Cape. 14.99 [pounds sterling]. 978 1 911214 32 8 Karl Miller died in 2014. His obituaries describe an outstanding portfolio of literary, journalistic and academic achievements. [...]

Elena Ferrante FRANTUMAGLIA A writer's journey 384pp. $24. 978 1 60945 292 6 THE BEACH AT NIGHT 48pp. $13. 978 1 60945 370 1 Both published by Europa The Mean [...]

Sofka Zinovieff PUTNEY 384pp. Bloomsbury. 14.99 [pounds sterling]. 978 1 4088 9575 7 PUTNEY Read by Annie Aldington Audible Sofka Zinovieff's second novel, Putney, addresses child abuse through the structure [...]

'A CABINET OF RARITIES' The curious collections of Sir Thomas Browne Royal College of Physicians, until July 27 The Norfolk-based writer, physician and antiquary, Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82), deserves to [...]

Nicola Barker IN THE APPROACHES 512pp. Fourth Estate. 18.99 [pounds sterling]. 978 0 00 758370 2 In the twenty-one years since the publication of her first collection of short stories, [...]

WOLF HALL BRING UP THE BODIES Adapted by Mike Poulton RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon, until March 29 Hilary Mantel has worked closely with the RSC on the adaptation of her Booker Prize-winning [...]

John Aubrey BRIEF LIVES With an apparatus for the Lives of our English mathematical writers Edited by Kate Bennett 1,968pp. Oxford University Press. 250 [pounds sterling] (US $399). 978 0 [...]

Margaret Atwood MADDADDAM 416pp. Bloomsbury. 18.99 [pounds sterling]. 978 1 4088 1970 8 (US: Knopf. $27.95.978 0 385 52878 8) The act of naming is the great and solemn consolation [...]

MIGRATIONS Journeys into British art Tate Britain, until August 12 Lizzie Carey-Thomas, editor MIGRATIONS Journeys into British art 128pp. Tate Publishing. 14.99 [pounds sterling]. 978 1 84976 007 2 Nonchalant, [...]

Hugh Aldersey-Williams THE ADVENTURES OF SIR THOMAS BROWNE IN THE 21ST CENTURY 352pp. Granta. 20 [pounds sterling]. 978 1 84708 900 7 'Few people love the writings of Sir Thomas [...]

Andrea Levy SMALL ISLAND Tenth anniversary edition 544pp. Tinder Press. Paperback, 8.99 [pounds sterling]. 978 1 4722 1106 4 SIX STORIES AND AN ESSAY 128pp. Tinder Press. 12.99 [pounds sterling]. [...]

Haruki Murakami COLORLESS TSUKURU TAZAKI AND HIS YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE Translated by Philip Gabriel 400pp. Harvill Secker. 20 [pounds sterling]. 978 1 84655 833 7 US: Knopf. $25.95. 978 0 [...]

Martin Kemp THE CHAPEL OF TRINITY COLLEGE OXFORD 88pp. Scala. Paperback, 12.95 [pounds sterling]. 978 1 85759 824 7 When Peter the Great visited Oxford in 1698, he spent scarcely [...]

Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton THE COMPLEAT ANGLER Edited by Marjorie Swann 328pp. Oxford University Press. 14.99 [pounds sterling]. 978 0 19 965074 3 Izaak Walton (1593-1683) is remembered as [...]

Craig Raine, editor ARETE A retrospective--Issue 40 504pp. Arete Books. Paperback, 10 [pounds sterling]. 978 0 9572999 2 4 ARETE Issue 41 (Autumn) Tri-annual. Arete. Annual subscription, 21 [pounds sterling]. [...]

Kate Atkinson LIFE AFTER LIFE 253pp. Doubleday. 18.99[pounds sterling]. 978 0 385 61867 0 Plenty of novels have alternative endings (The French Lieutenant's Woman, Life of Pi), some have more [...]

Hilary Mantel BRING UP THE BODIES 608pp. Fourth Estate. 20 [pounds sterling]. 978 0 00 731509 3 By writing a novel one performs a revolutionary act. A novel is an [...]